Children: Son - Jonathan (born 1939) Step-daughter - Rhea Step-daughter - Laurie Son - Peter (1958) Grand children: Christopher (1969); Laurie (1972); Victoria (1974); Peter (1977); Marshal (1994); Macy (1995) Immediately after college, after changing his name due to fear of anti-Semitism, Hayes went to work at WIP radio in Philadelphia as an announcer, making twenty-two dollars per week; within a year he moved into a managerial position.
In early 1943, Lieutenant General Jacob Devers, Eisenhower's chief of staff, asked him to start a GI radio station to help the morale of the homesick troops.
As Historian Trent Christman states, "Eleven stars - Army Chief of Staff Gen. George C. Marshall, Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and Lieutenant General Jacob Devers - pushing for completion by the target date of 4 July 1943 was powerful motivation for a young captain.
"[5] Then After the BBC offered to supply a studio where the broadcasts could take place, Hayes, with a group of Army clerks spent three weeks going through personnel records before they found twelve experienced radio people.
By its second year, AFN had a staff of over seven hundred people and sixty-three stations "scattered from Biarritz to Czechoslovakia; from London to Marseilles.
"[8] Hayes became a member of General Eisenhower staff, was promoted to lieutenant colonel and was awarded several medals including the American Bronze Star, the Order of the British Empire and the French Croix de Guerre.
A year later, he moved back to Washington to work for the Post Company as executive vice president, member of the board of directors and head of its radio, and later television, department.
However, the next several years was a time of enormous growth for the paper, and in March of 1954, the Post Company bought out its morning competitor, the Times-Herald.
This purchase gave the Post a "morning monopoly in the national capital, doubled its circulation, skyrocketed its advertising, and thereby produced a healthy financial basis on which it could, and would, become one of the world's major newspapers.
Phillip Graham, the driving force behind the paper and Hayes's boss, was one of the few men in the publishing industry at this time who understood the money to be made in the relatively new field of broadcasting.
In 1949, the Post sold WINX and, from CBS, bought the controlling interest of a much bigger radio station and renamed it WTOP.
[11] During this period, "revenues from the radio and television were a major sustainer of the newspaper until its own consistent moneymaking era began with the Times-Herald purchase.
"[14] In 1963, after Phil Graham shot and killed himself, his job was taken over by his wife, Katherine, and Hayes continued to run the broadcasting division.